Free association.

Freedom of the individual.

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DC also has a locality pay increase of 27.22% due to the high cost of living in order to attract employees away from private industry and lobbies. San Francisco has the highest in the country at 35.15%.

Cost of living is high because of the high wages, and not the other way around, its not that DC is surrounded by mountain ranges and is located over a volcano that it's difficult to carry goods to that area.

This is quite true. When I finished my master's degree, I had an offer in Kansas City for about $60k, and an offer in DC for about $80k. A quick cost of living comparison showed that I'd need $90k in DC to match my KC offer. I went to KC (which also had family, and so might have won in a even if DC had offered a comparable or higher adjusted salary).

The DC thing confuses me soooo much. Taxes are way lower just over the borders in VA and MD, but businesses like to be in DC. A name thing, I guess. I love living in MD, lower taxes, and I don't have to pay for an ambulance if I need it!

For DC, it's all federal government contractors, and the industries that support them. since government contractors make a lot of money, there's an entire economy that does well. When They started talking about sequester, even the local lunch shops were preparing for the worst.

I'm not understanding your response. I was just giving an explanation of why there's so much business in this area (DC metropolitan, Northern VA, parts of MD.) When you hear about federal contractors, and their billions and billions of dollar contracts, the lion's share of them are right here. That generates a huge economy.

I agree that there is a lot of business and money there because of the government, but you took it a step further and said that was ALL of the funding. I obtusely pointed out that a big company, AOL, is located there and is not funded by the state. Ditto other large networking companies, e.g., Network Solutions, Verisign, XO Communications, etc.

this is true of every location. The "DC ghetto" is bad, yes, but so is the Miami ghetto, and the Memphis ghetto, and the Chicago ghetto, and the Detroit ghetto, and the South Bronx ghetto, and the South Central LA ghetto, and the Atlanta ghetto, and the Philadelphia ghetto, and the St. Louis ghetto...

It has a great quality of living if you're among the people who have a great quality of living.

Absolutely.

If you're not, it's horrible.

Oh, you mean the poor we have everywhere servicing the rich? Well, do you suppose that other parts of the country, where the pay rate isn't as high have less poor people?

No?

Then I am not sure what your point actually is.

The topic is when does "this" (higher income levels than most of the rest of the country) become unacceptable. The answer, even in any type of free society would have to be never.

Now, can an argument be made that these payrates are only due to the federal government? I would suggest that this is only partially true. A quick drive through the area shows all kinds of companies, with many of them having nothing to do with the federal government, directly or indirectly.

One might then ask, if this high income area is partially or even solely supported by the federal government, what drives the NYC and Boston areas which have a similar income levels?

If you live in a rural, Republican state and are poor, you live far better than the poor in urban, Democrat states.

Down here in NC, $600 a month buys you a well-maintained apartment with a bedroom, bathroom, living area, kitchen, and dining area. What does $600 a month buy you in DC? A cardboard box on a street corner?

If you live in a rural, Republican state and are poor, you live far better than the poor in urban, Democrat states.

Mississippi would like to tell you that you're full of it, as would the poor of Massachusetts who probably live better than the poor bastards in Georgia, with their new program to screw everyone over.

Down here in NC, $600 a month buys you a well-maintained apartment with a bedroom, bathroom, living area, kitchen, and dining area. What does $600 a month buy you in DC? A cardboard box on a street corner?

True.

Damn good thing the poor in DC have subsidized housing to overcome that difference, don't you think?

Our "poor" people live better than your middle class.

No, no they don't. Maybe you're unaware how the middle class in Maryland live but it's a hell of a lot better than the poor in North Carolina. I have visited North Caroline on many occasions. You treat your poor like crap. If it wasn't for the federal programs, like SNAP, they'd mostly be dead.

wow there, come down with the liberal call out, there are PLENTY of conservatives that work there. and anti-business? most of these are the private contractors to the government specifically our privitized military.

There was a time when a government job was a trade off where you got great benefits and awesome job security along with guaranteed retirement in exchange for a comparatively small salary. Then the unions came along.......

It may not be 100% effective but I'm pretty sure they'd take more bribes if they struggled to make ends meet. It's much worse when the divide between power and retribution is bigger, esp. when it becomes culturally acceptable.

FWIW, most Congressmen - especially Senators - are well heeled. This article is a bit dated (from 2009), but it notes that more than two-thirds of Senators are millionaires, and the mean net worth was close to $14 million (which, granted, is being distorted by the exceptionally rich Senators).

As well as all that goes with it. For example, there's a Ferrari dealership just up the road from Dulles airport. Pretty sure those guys are making more than median income. Plus, high-end home builders and skilled craftsmen, etc., etc.

Hmm well surely by making it harder to get clearance, you're basically making clearance more valuable, and hence the person would get paid more for having it and would have less incentive to jeopardise it for a bribe?

That's possible, but unlikely. Sometimes they pay you "hazard income" of 15% on top of your salary if you're abroad...but he was in Hawaii. Bonuses Can occur, but he was only with the company 3 months. I doubt he would be eligible for an annual bonus. The only bonus I can think of that he could have made is a signing bonus when he was hired. I highly doubt that number is $80k though, that sounds extremely high. I would peg a signing bonus for an Associate making $120k at about 10-20% of his salary ($12k-24k) tops.

If people in DC didn't have so much sensitive information that they shouldn't have, it wouldn't be such a problem. I shouldn't have to play taxes to pay someone a high wage so they keep my income, assets, passwords, emails, internet search history and medical history a secret, there's no reason for them to have all that on me in the first place.

...or the fact that the cost of living here is through the fucking roof. Honest people trying to start a family with more than a studio apartment have to buy houses in shitty neighborhoods, if they want to own. This whole government-workers-make-too-much argument never considers that. Why is the cost of living in DC so high? I don't know, but it is, and I know, because I live here.

Yup, I used to live there. Now I live in southern va. The difference is ridiculous. Sure I could make 2x as much living up there but the house I'm in now would cost about 4x as much. Utilities are 3x as much even groceries are 2-3x more. It's insane.

Because so many people have so much money. There's a lot of dollars per acre/house/gallon of milk. The correlation between high cost of living and high wage generally starts with high wage, of course not always, but that's most likely the case in the DC area.

The problem is that they aren't a deterrent if the people bribing have enough money. Think about it.. someone making 100k a year after coming from a family that makes maybe 50k collectively from their parents is living like a king in his mind. He lives modestly.. houses there are cheap and can afford whatever he wants. But some guy comes along and offers a million dollars. That's a lot of money even for someone making a decent living. Most people fear their job ending or having an accident or something where they are stuck with debt and barely able to maintain their quality of life they are used to. In Russia I was reading they sometimes pay 2-5k for informants to risk their lives and give information. That's not a lot of money... yet is supposedly the main price point of secret information.

It is kind of important to pay someone with these types of clearances enough to not have a desire to take bribes... (Edit: this goes along with excessive background and character checks)

This is not why they get paid higher; they typically worry about bribes when an employee is under water, has high debt, etc. If you're making enough to live comfortably enough you're not likely to care especially if you believe in your work but digging out of a hole can be a huge motivator for taking bribes.

I guess this could be a mild excuse for such a massive income difference, but in reality what percentage of the population in the area consists of "intelligent engineers?"

I find it far more likely that the income difference is less to do with attempting to prevent bribery than with the fact that at the heart of this area is the world's largest machine of institutionalized theft. If massive amounts of money originate without a voluntary transaction then any subsequent salary or payment results in extensive price distortion. Not to mention that there is little to no incentive to distribute the money fairly or conservatively, as it was earned by someone else. And there are millions of business owners, politicians, opportunists, and crooks who find Washington D.C. to be the easiest place to acquire millions without providing real value in return.

I would like to know how many households in the area are producing shirts for people who need them, or building computers, or making food, or anything at all for that matter. There seems to me to be a far more rational explanation than, "the entire geographical area gets paid massive amounts to prevent bribery." If the origin of the funds is not done voluntarily how could anyone even know the real price of preventing such behavior in the first place?

That doesn't mean that government employees are making shitloads of money, that means people with shitloads of money move to where the government is. I used to live there and every lobbyist and every high dollar defense contracting rep, 3rd degree heir to the throne of Uzbekibkistanstan who is working as a US ambassador and anyone who makes any kind of money that has anything to do with laws, moves to D.C. Arlington and Crystal City if they are anybody. All the government bigwigs live somewhere else and keep an office in DC. They fly in and everyone works around their schedule

Fairfax and surrounding counties are some of the wealthiest in the US. What a shocker.

What's wrong with this? You realize that income around DC doesn't always involve government employees, right? Consulting and lobbying are big business. Last I checked, libertarians aren't against this.

Lots of money... all over the place.
Lots of well paid businessmen, contractors, etc.

while its right next to DC, i dont think i know a single person thats wealthy because of a political position/job. Many people here do work directly for or contract for the government however (myself included).

My uncle has some inlaws there that I've visited. All of them are locals who made a lot of money in the private sector. Just because it's a wealthy area doesn't mean it's all because of the government.

No. It's fine to talk about whatever. The problem is that it works. Without a massive federal government to give handouts, lobbying would be pretty ineffective. Can't we agree on this? The parasitic lobbyists are a result of the corruption of government, not the cause.

My problem with lobbying is that it's practically required. Microsoft for example didn't lobby for a long time and ended up losing some costly anti-trust cases. Since then they've lobbied and have been pretty much in the clear, at a fraction of the cost. I definitely agree it's the result of a corrupt government and not a cause.

The map showing income by location is yellow around DC, and purple everywhere else. This is because of our federal government and the associated industries that work to get what they want at the expense of the taxpayer.

See my comment here. I agree that everyone that lives in Fairfax, Loudoun, Montgomery and surrounding counties aren't employed directly by the government, but I would bet good money that the majority are indirectly. I lived there for 3 years, and 7 of my 9 random (craigslist) roommates over the span of that three years (I lived in both Loudoun and Fairfax counties) worked either for the government directly, or for companies that got the vast majority of their funding from the government, including myself. An unscientific study to be sure, but I'm confident that a legit study will back up my hypothesis: federal government employees and clients are getting paid far more than the rest of the nation for the same quality work.

Why am I posting it to r/libertarian? Accumulation of wealth and power by a government class doesn't bode well for freedom of the rest of us.

My source is only me. I've worked in the aerospace industry for quite some time, and I promise that engineers at most of the private space firms put in far more hours and far more work than their higher paid counterparts at NASA.

In the time I lived in DC I also lived with and had a lot of friends who were CIA analysts (40 hour work weeks with 2 hours paid for exercise, large signing bonuses, very healthy salaries and then after a few years they go to consulting firms and get paid twice as much for essentially the same work). I also lived with a graphic artist for a DoD consulting firm, who worked there despite wanting to go to Seattle because he "would get paid half as much anywhere else." I also had acquaintances whose parents were lobbyists... they did not live in small houses.

Trying to quantify "quality work" is problematic, so I doubt you'll find much data out there on that.

Edit: I just realized that asking for a source for this is asinine. My original comment stated:

An unscientific study to be sure, but I'm confident that a legit study will back up my hypothesis: federal government employees and clients are getting paid far more than the rest of the nation for the same quality work.

I've worked for govt. contractors, Fortune 500 firms, non-profits, small business, a dot.bomb. My father was a GS15 that was on the CPO board, and an SES selectee (and chose to retire instead). I have a friend that is in management in NASA, another at the NSA, etc. I talk to these people all the time to see trends. As someone in management, I know what people make at the Very Large Company for whom I work. I live in Loudoun county and work in Fairfax county (Reston) - those bright yellow dots. That's my source for what follows.

Govt. employees do not make more than civilians across the board. It's a huge problem for some agencies to keep people; for example, the DoD struggles to find IT people in Hawaii. Contractors get paid more, but often don't have the same job security and benefits as corporate workers, and definitely not the same as civil servants. I have hired people out of the government and paid them 30-100% more.

There are a LOT of non-government, technical jobs in this area. Bio, telecom, IT, entertainment, and aerospace are huge around here. I have guys working for me making good salaries that have never come close to government related work.

Why are the high salaries an issue, especially in /r/Libertarian? People should get paid for the quality and cost benefit of their work. For example, my previous team took on several projects/products and we ran them at a much high rate of success than the team 5x larger. Yes, my guys were paid more, but it still saved the company a ton of money and we kept out customers happy. Were their salaries worth the six figures? Hell yes.

Whether a free market pays high or low is fine, since true market participants pay based on quality and value of labor. Government doesn't play by those rules. Congress can give themselves raises, award lucrative contracts based on personal relationships rather than competitive market dynamics, and have the power to become incredibly wealthy due to immunity from insider trading laws.

Executives certainly show that it's more about who you know than what you know. However, just as quickly as they can climb the ladder, they can fall when they screw up, because no amount of corporate friendship can save you if you squander millions of dollars and the board of directors find out how badly you've ruined the company. Congressmen are able to pitch their screwups as "playing the game" or can blame the failures of their legislation on the opposition watering it down. The media doesn't report properly anymore, so it's much harder for the misinformed people to hold their representatives accountable.

As another resident of NoVa have a look at all the tech companies around here too. There are many many companies that don't do work for the government, and quite a few large data center and network hub operations as well as an incredibly high cost of living. This isn't because of the government entirely and saying that having wealth concentrated in the capitol is unacceptable just because it's the capital is kinda a confirmation bias. How many engineers and scientists and lawyers and doctors work out in all those purple counties? What is their cost of living?

Belittling those just trying to have a discussion is pretty poor form. I really don't care if I'm "wrong." I mean, I may defend my position a little too much because I'm human, but part of the reason I posted this was to work through something that has bothered me ever since living in DC. Points offered by people on this forum have challenged and changed the way I think about it, which was the point.

The only thing your response has done is made me upset.

I have reasonable responses to each of your questions, but since you're obviously not asking them in a sincere desire to understand, why bother...

Lobbying is one of those things I'm against ethically, but certainly don't think the government should ban it. There can be plenty of things an individual libertarian might be against but won't deny someone else from doing.

On average, government in 40% of direct spending of GDP, depending on where you live and that doesn't include heavy regulation in certain sectors like healthcare. We live in a nation where the free market is less than half of the market.

The Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI are all right there. Assorted defense contractors work nearby. It's also the nation's capital, with thousands of protected historic buildings and other construction restrictions, so housing's inherently expensive.

Elected officials could work for free, lobbying could be a capital offense, and we could cut military spending by half, and the average income there would still be ridiculously high.

I live in one of those yellow counties... avg income is like $100k but everything is incredibly expensive and it has the best schools in the country. My county also has the highest percentage of people with a college degree which means more money too. It costs a lot to live here so people get paid a lot..... Also the government doesn't know what they are doing when it comes to money.

Have you lived in Northern Virginia/Southern Maryland? The government employees aren't the ones with all the money. The demographic area has many jobs that pay very heavily. The wealth, from what I saw growing up there, comes from stock trading, medical practices, law firms, lobbyists, and medical/pharma workers.

Good to get that insight. I only lived there 3 years and was in the engineering industry, so my field of view was pretty biased to engineers. And intelligence analysts. They're all over the goddamn place, it seems, no matter which industry you're in.

I feel like you're going to have to put some qualifiers on the idea that government employees make more than the private sector. This is likely true in some industries, but DEFINITELY not true in others. I work in an inpatient psychiatric hospital as a Mental Health Technician (somewhere between a nurse's aid and an orderly) making 9 dollars an hour base pay with a dollar shift differential and an extra 3.98 on weekends. So as a non-degreed worker I'm making nearly 14 dollars an hour with shift differentials in the private sector (I work weekends so that I can work on my degree during the week). Employees doing the exact same job in state hospitals are literally making minimum wage.

Paramedic here. When I worked for a private company, they ran me into the ground for $14 an hour with no benefits. I got a county job and have amazing benefits with one of the highest paying EMS systems in Texas. I really think it depends on location.

People in public sector make more money than in private sector. Proof that the public sector is better and we should stop privatizing and start publicizing everything. More money for everyone, end poverty forever! Capitalists go bankrupt. Repeat for infinite money.

Plus many public sector employees have guaranteed pensions on top of their high salary.

Used to be public sector got low wages and guaranteed pension benefits vs. private sector's high salaries and no pension. Then public salaries went up and benefits got crazy good. This is not sustainable.

Yeah, that really yellow boot-shaped county is Loudoun County. I live right in the center. To be honest, our household income isn't that high, but I know several areas around that are pretty rich indeed.

loudoun fistbump. Idk why people think that everyone here is rolling in cash, having lived other areas in Virginia as well yeah sure there are nicer cars and nicer malls here but people as a whole aren't running around burning money. There are rich people but a lot of more 'worthless' by these imposed standards live out in LA and other places.

If people stopped donating so much money to political campaigns, and organizations, there would be a lot less money in DC. All those strategists and analysts are paid with your campaign donations. The lobbyists from those causes you support, they draw their salary from your donations.

loudoun and fairfax county are considered to be "silicon valley east." while they do make a lot of money from government contracting (private industries in that area) i don't think much of the median household income can be attributed just to government spending. there are a lot of tech giants and communications corporations that hire tens of thousands of people into high tech jobs in that area.

Keep in mind that 120K in that area is NOT a lot of money to make in a year. Considering a 1000 square house built in the 50's from a sears kit that has never been updated and sits on a tenth of an acre of land sells for around $550,000.
Edit: speeling.

When you're under 24 hour surveillance. When the police listens to what you say in your own home. Once the police are equipped to deal with any resistance with lethal force...once the rich are safe behind walls.